A few weeks ago I chanced across a piece of information which explains the reason for the time frame I have chosen for Streets of …But before I tell you more about it, let’s go back to some of the events that took place over the last few years.

When I started the project in 2004, I felt that the right time to complete the audio-visual recordings in the seven cities was June 2012. This decision came to me well before London was selected to host the Olympics at that same time. Of course such a high profile event gave me further ground for the decision, which up to that point seemed a bit irrational and yet strangely instinctive. The Olympics are the best possible opportunity in London to share the project with people from the countries I have and will be visiting during my journey. I was happy with the decision. Yet, regardless of the rational behind it there was still something missing, something hidden behind this date, which I could not fully grasp.

The production of the first video-audio piece, Streets of Naples took place in early June 2004. At the time, I was curator of the London International Festival of Theatre for which I had created a framework of collective engagement to explore the theme of international theatre in London. Together with the directors and the rest of the creative team, we had decided to invite one hundred people of different ages, and from different cultural and professional backgrounds to respond to the question “What is theatre to you?” This mechanism of public engagement had been conceived as a process of democratic creative creation, hence my decision to throw myself in the mix, asking the same question and giving my personal answer. The life in the streets and alleyways of Naples seemed to me the quintessential expression of the theatricality of the everyday life. So I decided to go back to my town of birth, get in touch with local artists and with a small, non-intrusive mini dv camera, I set myself the task to record peoples’ everyday movements, gestures and sounds which are rooted well beyond the present moment. Set at the crossroad of ancient and modern cultures, Naples is a city which strikes visitors with its breathless natural beauty, astonishing art and monuments and countless manifestations of social injustice. Its ‘representation’ of human life, with its comedy and tragedy, could be traced back to ‘units’ of movement and sound which go beyond any stereotypical codification. My intention was to convey this extraordinary experience in a seven minutes video-audio installation and share it with the LIFT Enquirers and the general public.

What I did not know at the time was that, while I was completing the editing of the piece, the transit of Venus was taking place, a rare phenomenon which happens when the Sun, Venus and Earth are in perfect alignment. Observed from Earth the transit is visible through the small black disk of the planet Venus slowly wandering over the bright disk of the Sun in the course of several hours as the planes of the orbits meet. This piece of information came to my attention only recently, while visiting Wolfgang Tillmans’ exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery in London last September. As explained in his written piece about his photos of the transit, this phenomenon happens in a regular cycle of 122 years, then 8 years later, after which it takes another 122 years and so on. The last transit took place on 8 June 2004. The next transit will occur on 6 June 2012.

So here was the explanation I had been looking for such a long time! This was the reason behind my unmoveable decision to complete the recordings of Streets of… by June 2012, regardless of friends and colleagues’ suggestions of looking at it as a life project and becoming more relaxed about its deadline. I am relaxed, this is the most beautiful art work I have worked on so far in my life and, if it was left to me, I would probably never end it. But now I know why the project needs to be finished by that time, because it is not my time, that is the time of the stars and planets travelling around us. Yes, there is still a long way to go as I have three more cities to visit and record, but I hope to find the support I need to keep to my path and produce a result which I am happy to share with audiences. All I can say at the moment is to watch this space. I’m sure there will be more intersting things to come.